Mark Zuckerberg has spent over 20 years building the Facebook brand, but it could all come to an end in one fell swoop.
Parent company Meta used words like “outlandish” and argued there was no historical precedent for its proposed punishment in recent legal filings for a lawsuit that could completely wipe out the company.
‘A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement.’
Twenty-nine states are currently engaged in a lawsuit against Meta that accuses the company of violating child privacy laws that bar the collection of data from underage users.
The online company is facing court battles from almost every cardinal direction, but four particular states are threatening Meta with penalties of $1.4 trillion, which nearly equals its entire valuation; according to Yahoo Finance, Meta’s market cap is $1.48 trillion.
Meta responded to the sum in documents from the case in California, saying the “sheer magnitude” of the demands from the attorneys general “offends constitutional and ethical limits.”
“In just a single one of their ‘Remedy Chart’ calculations, the AGs seek over one trillion dollars in penalties and disgorgement, and they then layer on various other double-counting charts,” Meta wrote.
The massive sum comes from the AGs in California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, who reportedly came up with the figure by estimating every under-13 user in each state that could have been affected by Meta’s policies.
“Each of these charts applies the maximum statutory penalty to every teen and purported under-13 user and every monthly instance of time spent at certain arbitrarily-selected thresholds,” Meta claimed.
Meta argued, “A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission recently described a ‘$1 billion penalty’ as ‘the largest ever in a case involving an FTC rule violation.”
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Meta further argued that the demands made were in “gross disproportion” to the alleged violations, and are “unsubstantiated” and “outlandish.”
The defense went on, calling the trillion-dollar figure a “construct of lawyers” that counts the same individuals “many times over.”
The aforementioned jurisdictions are also looking to pin claims of misleading the public on Meta, which they say “prioritized profits over the safety of kids.”
A spokesperson for the California attorney general’s office told the New York Post that Meta helped fuel the mental health crisis that is “impacting a generation of American children.”
“The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial in August,” the spokesperson added. The two sides will meet in court on August 18 in Oakland, California.
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Another parallel claim Meta is battling accuses the company of being aware of the harm its platforms can cause.
A former employee alleged that Meta stopped internal research that would have shown that ceasing use of Facebook saw users become less depressed or anxious. Blaze News reported on this portion of the lawsuit in November, which allegedly included a study called Project Mercury.
Project Mercury was allegedly initiated in 2019 to “explore the impact” of Meta apps and how they can affect “polarization, news consumption, well-being, and daily social interactions.”
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